CHAPTER I.
It was a little after midnight, in the last week of February, in the year 1797.
Three or four tallow candles, lighted fairly well that part of a large-sized room, in which stood a huge, old-fashioned four-poster bed, on which old William Grierson lay dying.
He looked a man of seventy-five at least. The scant hair of his head was like silver. His long, hatchet-like face was almost waxen in appearance, and remarkably free from wrinkles, and in the grey eyes shone some of the old fire. But it was evident as he lay there that not only his hours but his minutes were numbered. Between the midnight and the dawn seems to be the time chosen by the Messenger of Death to bring the last imperative, unavoidable summons, especially to the old whose footsteps have lingered in the ways of life. It is, perhaps, kindly meant, for it is the time when the rational forces are weakest, and when the chief desire—faint at best—is for repose.
By the bedside of the dying man were seated two persons. One was a youth with one foot across the threshold of manhood. He was well-built, active, good-looking, but his weak mouth suggested want of resolution, and the edges of his eyelashes, which concealed his dreamy eyes, were suspiciously bright, as if tears had just visited them. He was the only son—the only child—of the dying man, and was here now, he knew, to receive his father’s last advice—his last blessing. The other was a man of fifty or thereabouts. He had a rugged, serious face, and by his dress and appearance would at once be taken for what he was—a Dissenting minister. He was seated towards the end of the bed. The young man sat beside the pillow.
“I feel my last moments are come, Robby,” he said faintly, “and I would like to give you my blessing before I go.”
Suppressing a sob, for the lad dearly loved his father, and was even more dearly loved by him, because ‘he was the child of his old age,’ Robby knelt down beside the bed, and the dying father extended his thin, wasted hand, that was almost transparent, and laid it fondly on the head of the boy. The clergyman had also knelt down, and with his hands raised in supplication to heaven, he prayed silently in sympathy with the old man who was so soon to pass away from this fleeting world.
It was a scene and a moment to move less responsive hearts than that of young Robbie Grierson. He felt himself like one under some sacred spell, and at the touch of his father’s hand his innermost and deepest feelings were stirred.
“I am going home, Robbie,” he said. “I am going home where I hope to meet the mother that bore ye and that ye never saw, and who gave her life for ye, and before I go I want ye to promise me something, laddie. I want ye to promise me something—will ye do it, Robbie? Will ye promise it?”
Robbie bent his forehead until it touched the coverlet of the bed.
“I will promise, father.”
“Blessed are those who honour their father and their mother, for their days will be long in the land,” murmured the clergyman, as if to himself.
“Well, Robbie, the times are strange, and men are talking of revolution, and overthrowing governments, and of war that will be needed to bring all that about. I am a dying man, Robbie, and what do all their present charges and revolutions seem to me. Ah, nothing more, lad, than the crimples on the lake when the wind blows, or than the billows when the storm rages—a boat or ship may go down with its load of souls, but when the wind is at rest again, all is as before.”
The tone of the speaker was so solemn, and the surroundings so dramatic, that Robbie felt in no mood to question anything that was said, but listened with pious and filial resignation.
“And now, Robbie, lad, I want ye to promise me, afore I go, that you will not any longer meddle or make with politics, and that you will have nothing to do with any of these societies that, I hear, are being formed in this country, bound by oaths, they tell me. Will ye promise, Robbie, will ye promise, lad. I am getting weak, Robbie, I want ye to promise me before I go, for your mother’s sake and mine, laddie, and there’s Mr. M’Clane there who will be your witness, Robbie.”
But Robbie was silent and did not reply. The request had taken him by a surprise so great that he knew not what to answer.
Robert Grierson, with, as he believed, the tacit approval of his father, had joined the Society of United Irishmen, and as he was well-educated, enthusiastic, and in a good position, for his father was known to be very well off, and, besides his extensive farm, had a good round sum in the bank, he easily acquired a rather prominent position, and was at the head of one of the committees of councils into which his county was divided. The society had become oath-bound, and Robbie, in view of his obligation as a member of it, knew not what to reply to his father’s unexpected request.
“Honour your father and mother if your days will be long in the land.”
It was the voice of the minister raised scarcely higher than a whisper.
“Will ye promise me, laddie, I’m flittin’? Will ye promise me, Robbie, before I go?”
Robert felt the hand on his relaxing. He lifted his own to catch it, and found it cold. He looked on his father’s face, and though he had not seen many die he felt the end was at hand.
“Will ye promise, Robbie?” the voice was growing fainter.
“I promise.”
“Kiss me, Robbie.”
The son lifted himself up, bent over and kissed the wan lips of the father.
“I die happy now, Robbie.”
The tears blinded the youth’s eyes. Brushing them away he looked his last look on his dying father, who held one of his hands. The clergyman had crept up and slipped his hand into the other.
A little gasp, a little flicker of the eyes, and all was over. Old William Grierson was no more.
At the funeral, a few days after, the whole countryside was present, for the deceased had been held in high esteem, and there was much talk as to the future of Robbie Grierson, who found himself so early in life master of a fine position, and even during the funeral procession of the father those who were friends of the deceased were speculating as to the marriage prospects of his son, for this is the way of the world.
But when the burial was over and done, Robbie Grierson set himself to work earnestly at the farm, and kept himself aloof from his former associates. He seemed to have become a wholly different being. He had been a bright, light-hearted youth, ready for all innocent fun and frolic. Now he courted solitude and became almost morose. He declined all invitations to the meetings of the United Irish Society, giving now one excuse and now another, until at last it became evident to the members that he did not wish any longer to attend them. He was looked upon as a very serious loss to their ranks, for he possessed considerable influence over a wide extent of country, and had been the means of attracting many recruits to the ranks of the brotherhood. What made his loss still more serious in the eyes of the heads of the society was that it appeared to be a defection, and, if such, it was likely to prove a tempting example to others who had looked up to Robert Grierson as one of the props of the society.
His conduct seemed inexplicable, for though not looked upon by his superiors as very resolute or masterful, he was believed to be sincere. At length the explanation got about, which young Grierson himself, for some reason or another, was reluctant to offer, and when the story of the death came to be told, the utmost sympathy was felt with Grierson, and it was admitted by most that, under the circumstances, he could hardly be blamed for making the solemn promise which detached him from the United Irishmen. But among them there were not wanting some who scoffed at Robert’s respect for the promise which he had given to the dead, but the majority, it must be said, respected him for it, although they considered it was unreasonable to exact it, and not binding on Robert.
Avoiding, as far as possible, doing any violence to his feelings, the chief men of the district endeavoured to withdraw him from his solitary course, but in vain. They represented to him that a promise exacted under such circumstances was not binding, for if it were, then the living generations might always be bound by the dead, and that all progress in human affairs would be arrested.
But Robert Grierson heeded them not, and he became apparently more disconsolate, and what time he could spare from his business he spent wandering by the banks of the stream, broad and brown, and tossing up its tawny locks as it passed fretfully over the stones that here and there interrupted its passage, and which formed the “mearing” between his property and Mr. George Jephson, who was one of the chiefs of the United Irish Society in his district.
A little story got abroad that there was another, or at least an additional, reason for Robert Grierson keeping so much to himself. It was said that he had been the suitor of a young lady in a position a little higher than his own, and that in the eyes of her parents his Republican principles had proved an insuperable barrier to their union, and that with the object of bringing their romantic attachment to an end, the young lady had been sent away to England and was lost on the voyage there, the vessel in which she sailed having been wrecked just outside Holyhead and all on board drowned.
The story was, in the main, true, and it was a cause of the most poignant grief to Robert Grierson that, having allowed his first love to go away from him rather than surrender his political principles, he now felt himself coerced by his promise to his dead father to abandon them, and, at least, to find it necessary for him to sever himself from those who continued to be the exponents of those principles.
But love-stricken as Robert Grierson was, his heart had not been fatally wounded, and although the homely life he was now leading seemed to hand him over a prey to melancholy, and although he persuaded himself that he was utterly love-lorn and that his heart was secure from any new assaults of Cupid, he knew nothing of the power and the wiles of the mischievous son of Aphrodite, and never dreamt that the little archer had the shaft fitted to the bow that would leave the whirring string only to find a sure passage into his, Robert Grierson’s heart.